Exploring: Salamanders

In response to indications of worldwide declines in amphibian populations, the President and Congress directed Interior Department agencies to initiate a national program of amphibian monitoring, research, and conservation. There is an urgent need to determine the scope and severity of the problem and to investigate causes. The U.S. Geological Survey is uniquely qualified to coordinate and lead a cooperative national effort because its scientists have been in the forefront of studying amphibian populations and life history traits, measuring and monitoring environmental characteristics, and conducting research into potential causes of decline. As a result, the Agency formed the National Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI).

Energy production in the Williston Basin, located in the Prairie Pothole Region of central North America, has increased rapidly over the last several decades. Advances in recycling and disposal practices of saline wastewaters (brines) co-produced during energy production have reduced ecological risks, but spills still...

Environmental sources of selenium (Se) such as from organic-enriched sedimentary deposits are geologic in nature and thus can occur on regional scales. A constructed map of the global distribution of Se source rocks informs potential areas of reconnaissance for modeling of Se risk including the phosphate deposits of southeastern Idaho and the...

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From 2002-2006, we used a variety of sampling techniques to survey the amphibians and
water chemistry of Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge in Florida’s Big Bend region. We
recorded 23 amphibian species, 19 frogs and 4 salamanders. Species richness was lower than in other areas of the coastal Big Bend region to the north, perhaps due to a...

Understanding how factors that vary in spatial scale relate to population abundance is vital to forecasting species responses to environmental change. Stream and river ecosystems are inherently hierarchical, potentially resulting in organismal responses to fine‐scale changes in patch characteristics that are conditional on the watershed context....

In occupancy studies, species misidentification can lead to false‐positive detections, which can cause severe estimator biases. Currently, all models that account for false‐positive errors only consider omnibus sources of false detections and are limited to single‐species occupancy.However, false detections for a given species often occur because...

The amphibian skin microbiome is recognized for its role in defence against pathogens, including the deadly fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Yet, we have little understanding of evolutionary and ecological processes that structure these communities, especially for salamanders and closely related species. We...

Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), a pathogenic chytrid fungus, is nonnative to the United States and poses a disease threat to vulnerable amphibian hosts. The Bsal fungus may lead to increases in threatened, endangered, and sensitive status listings at State, Tribal, and Federal levels, resulting in financial costs associated with...

We present a review and analysis of the conservation status and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat categories of all 360 currently recognized species of extant and recently extinct turtles and tortoises (Order Testudines). Our analysis is based on the 2018 IUCN Red List status of 251 listed species, augmented by...

A new USGS Open-File Report outlines findings from a scenario building workshop on a wildlife disease, facilitated by the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sciences Group (SSG) and led by the USGS.

Jill joined the NEARMI research team in 2016 with a background in field biology. She completed her MS degree in 2018 at the University of Massachusetts where she focused on spatial ecology and population dynamics of terrestrial salamanders. Jill is especially interested in the relationships of amphibian populations to their broader ecosystems and...

Who lives in your stream? Rivers and streams, even small ones, are teeming with a vast number of species, including fish, aquatic invertebrates, and algae. Stream ecology is the study of those aquatic species, the way they interrelate, and their interactions with all aspects of these flowing water systems.

Many amphibians are either too small or too slow to avoid an oncoming car. For some populations of the Federally threatened Yosemite toad (Anaxyrus canorus), this has meant increased mortality from vehicle strikes in addition to other threats from disease, drought, and habitat loss.

Patuxent has a strength in Herpetology, with an emphasis on amphibian work: we manage the Northeast Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) and we specialize in the taxonomy, status, and distribution of amphibians – as well as reptiles – with our museum-based team at the National Museum of Natural History.

Scientists of the USGS National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) in collaboration with partners have developed risk assessments for Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) in the United States and have begun sampling high-risk locations for the fungus.